World Cup 2023: Pat Cummins open to staying on as Australia ODI captain, set to enter IPL 2024 auction

Pat Cummins is open to continuing as Australia’s ODI captain well beyond the World Cup after overseeing an incredible turnaround of fortunes for the team during the tournament. The pacer also said that he would be putting his name in for the upcoming IPL 2024 auction after withdrawing his participation for the previous season.

Cummins was appointed as the skipper of the Australian side after Aaron Finch’s decision to retire last year and the end of the ongoing World Cup was considered to be the end point of his tenure. After a poor start to the campaign, where they lost the first two games to India and South Africa respectively, the Aussies were able to pull things together and went on a seven-game winning streak which sees them take on the Proteas in the second semi-final.

WORLD CUP 2023: FULL COVERAGE

With a strong case made for him to continue as the skipper of the side, Cummins said, as quoted by cricket.com.au, he is open to the idea but admitted that coach Andrew McDonald and selection chief George Bailey will have the final say in the matter.

“Potentially, yeah. We’ll chat about it,” said Cummins.

“We’ve been pretty open, me and Andrew and George around different times in the year you’re going to have different priorities,” said Cummins.

“This is a bit of a one-off year where there’s three or four big off-season events. After here the focus shifts back to Test cricket for a fair while. Probably like we’ve done in the past, at times white-ball cricket is going to have to shift (as a priority) so we fully focus on Test cricket.”

“There’s no end date in sight.”

“I feel like I’ve been managed really well and looked after in a really, really busy year where you don’t really want to give up any cricket.”

With the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 being the next major event, Cummins said that his form in the shortest format of the game has slipped and announced that he would be entering his name for the IPL 2024 auction to make a case for his inclusion into the squad for the tournament.

“I feel like I haven’t played a heap of T20 cricket and in some ways I feel like I haven’t played my best T20 cricket for a little while,” said Cummins.

“I’m really excited, I’m probably going to go into the IPL auction for next year to try to get some games before that World Cup and push a case to not only make the side but get back to how I feel like I can bowl in T20 cricket.”